Towing firm's boss isn't giving up fight

By Vianna Davila :
August 7, 2012
: Updated: August 7, 2012 11:44pm

John D. DeLoach, former owner now employee of Bexar Towing, who was arrested Friday Aug. 3 for not lowering the company's towing charges to the city's mandated $85. Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012.

Photo By BOB OWEN/San Antonio Express-News

A Bexar Towing truck pulls a car on it's lot. John D. DeLoach, former owner now employee of Bexar Towing, was arrested Friday Aug. 3 for not lowering the company's towing charges to the city's mandated $85. Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012.

Photo By BOB OWEN/San Antonio Express-News

John D. DeLoach, former owner now employee of Bexar Towing, who was arrested Friday Aug. 3 for not lowering the company's towing charges to the city's mandated $85. Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012.

John DeLoach won't stop his crusade against San Antonio's $85 private towing fee cap — no, not by a long shot, he said, not after years spent challenging the price ceiling he says is so low that it eventually will put him and his competitors out of the towing business.

But the founder of Bexar Towing finally conceded one battle, at least for now.

In an interview Tuesday, DeLoach said Bexar Towing has started charging people the lower, city-mandated fee since he was arrested Friday night for refusing to reduce a $293 towing charge, the amount the company had regularly collected from people whose vehicles were illegally parked in private lots.

That's just one fight. DeLoach, 65, detailed the many others he's pursued against the city, including a recent lawsuit challenging the fee limit, in the interview at the Bexar Towing offices and tow yard in Northeast San Antonio. This isolated industrial area is where the unlucky go to retrieve their impounded vehicles.

Though he sold the business to his son and other partners in 2010 after suffering several heart attacks, he still spends much of his time here and is the lienholder on the property.

DeLoach became emotional several times as he described the past several months.

He said he built the company from nothing, starting in 1994 when he was working as a manager at the downtown Denny's on Commerce Street. He got so frustrated with vehicles illegally parking in the restaurant lot, one day he quit. The next day, he bought his first tow truck.

Years later, the city's decision to set the $85 fee forced DeLoach, he said, to lay off 30 percent of his staff, including his brother-in-law, in 2002.

San Antonio, he said, still is far below the curve compared with other cities.

As far as private tows go, DeLoach is right: towing companies in Houston can charge $155; in Dallas, they can collect $121 plus $40 in fees. A July story in the San Marcos Mercury said the private towing fee in that city was $75, putting San Antonio not that much higher though it is far bigger.

But no one, San Antonio City Attorney Michael Bernard said, charges fees as exorbitant as $250.

He has defended the city's legal action against Bexar Towing, which was cited by police about 500 times in May alone for charging more than the city's limit.

DeLoach said he is going by a 2003 state law that requires cities to conduct studies to determine the appropriate cost for tows.

Two months after its passage, DeLoach sent the city a letter asking officials to launch such a study or else he would increase his rates “to a more reasonable representation of my company's financials.” The city did not do the study; DeLoach increased his fee to $115.

“I wasn't gouging anyone,” he said.

Bernard said he was unaware of any letters DeLoach might have sent the city in 2003, nor does he care, he said, comparing the notion to someone sending officials a letter declaring that he won't follow the speed limit.

“Doesn't make it OK,” Bernard said.

Eventually, DeLoach increased his charge to more than $120. When the state law was amended again in 2010, he bumped it to $250, plus the extra fees.

Throughout that time, DeLoach said, the city's enforcement of the rules was sporadic. He said police showed up in his office in 2004 and issued him six citations, one for each month between September 2003, when he started charging more than the city cap, and February. He said a judge found him guilty and fined him only for September.DeLoach said the city eventually conducted a tow fee study in 2006 but it never saw the light of day. Bernard confirmed it was done but that, for whatever reason, the fees were not raised at that time.

Now a new study is under way. Bernard said the city may decide to move forward with an increase, once it's complete.

Physician David Lauck, 27, a medical resident at San Antonio Military Medical Center, was shocked by Bexar Towing's fee when his car was towed from his apartment complex lot in May, after he forgot to switch over his parking decal to his new vehicle. The amount he forked over to Bexar Towing was about $100 more than a tow he once paid for in Chicago.

“It just blows my mind that it could be so expensive,” he said.

San Antonio does allow companies to charge $120 for towing illegally parked vehicles on public streets, but only a handful of towing companies hold the right to impound those vehicles. Bexar Towing is not one of them.

DeLoach challenges those companies' right to collect more than those who tow vehicles from private lots. But Bernard said the city demands more from the companies doing the public tows, like meeting certain response times and equipment requirements. The city also collects $6 of the public tow fee.

“A private tow, we don't have all these requirements for anything,” Bernard said.

DeLoach maintains other towing companies just like his have charged more than the city cap but that he's the only businessman with enough experience to fight back.

He questions Bernard's pledge that another towing study is under way and could be complete in three months.